Go-C Wall-E

Bored already this holiday weekend? Make it a point to see Wall-E, Pixar's latest neo-animation instant classic. Wall-E is a quasi-Luddite affair, an ironic but skillful use of groundbreaking cinematic technology to warn us about the dangers of this very technology. Indeed, it uses technology to caution us about technology better than any less technological vehicle could have done.

The movie observes how we "inhabit" a world in which we can customize our environment exactly to our liking, to the point that we neglect our actual environment and our actual community of human beings.

I saw that lesson displayed before even the opening previews, as the man ahead of me in line yammered on the phone, oblivious to most everything beyond his phone call. He initially requested two tickets for Hancock. When informed by the cashier that the movie hadn't opened yet, he and his date slowly scanned the list of movies as though they were the only people in line. All the while, the man focused mainly on carrying on his conversation with the disembodied voice brought to him by Verizon; the movie cashier may as well have been Wall-E the robot.

Once inside, the movie proceeded to reveal what happens when you take such a technological development to its not-so-natural conclusion. Watch it and think anew about our new virtual world, in which it is so easy to shut out the real world, thanks to iPhones, iPods and a growing willingness to treat the people around us as though they were machines.